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Microsoft Plans Data Center in Siberia
miller60 writes "Microsoft has announced plans to build a data center in Siberia. The facility near the city of Irkutsk will be able to hold 10,000 servers. Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply, and will be able to support a 50 megawatt utility feed. The average winter temperature is below zero in Irkutsk (which is perhaps best known to gamers as a territory in Risk). Microsoft recently announced huge data center projects in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland, and is clearly ramping up its worldwide infrastructure platform as it competes with Google." No doubt this will save a fortune on cooling costs- they can just crack a window.
I guess Ballmer's not satisfied anymore with throwing chairs at people. He's decided to add Siberian exile to the mix.
... data center cools you.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
"So Bob, we hear you're thinking about taking a job with Google. That's great. But, we'd like to make you an offer to stay. Just put this blindfold on, and we'll take you on a short plane ride to your new office. We believe you'll end up staying the rest of your life."
I thought Windows was already cracked.... /oblig. Sorry, somebody had to say it...
Anyone who knows would start building up their data centers in Australia as you can get the whole area and it's an easily defensible region which will increase your build stats. Then wait till after the other data centers fight it out in Asia and Europe you move in and take over.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
When people think of Siberia, they think only of the winter. Well, it actually has a summer as well with up to +30C. It is the so called extreme continental climate which only Russia has - down to -40C winter, +36 in the middle of summer.
I would not want to design the cooling/heating system for a datacenter to cope with that.
Also, where are they going to get the fiber to hook the thing up? It is not like there is plenty of abundant network infrastructure there.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?
The upside is you throw a lot of money at a country that's recently stepped up anti-piracy efforts (albeit biased against dissidents), thus getting a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement. Microsoft helps boost the Russian economy, possibly even throwing extra money to help offset "improvement costs" in the area, and Russia continues to make sure those nasty pirates stay away (at least the pirates engaging in double-plus ungood speech).
But then again, I am pretty cynical when it comes to money and politics.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
1) Siberia gets a lot colder than -10C. -10C is 14F. That's not cold at all -- a -10C winter day in Virginia wouldn't be considered all that odd.
;-)
2) As long as you don't get a frost buildup, solid-state electronics will generally work just fine in cold environments. Hard drives *might* have some mechanical difficulties if you take them really far below zero, and laptop batteries tend to have a tough time maintaining a charge in the cold. Apart from that, though, you could probably let it get that cold without worrying about the servers themselves. However, the admins running the servers might mutiny if you subject them those sorts of conditions
3) The servers aren't going to be outdoors. Duh.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Well, I found the news interesting. I wouldn't want a report for every data center but I find that this kind of information is newsworthy because:
- it involves a lot of computers
- Microsoft comes from a shrinkwrap background not online business
- Siberia summons images of cold, wild, hostile environments
- This is a datacenter far from where most of the users live and is therefore an interesting consequence of the Internet
So I mod the article up any day and welcome our Siberian overlords.
The Canadian prairies can hit those extremes as well. We have lots of server rooms in this area of the world. Considering we've been dealing with these temperature fluxuations for a long time, we've learned how to deal with them. We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Its not really that tough. Insulation works both ways.
Not to troll, but why is this news? What is newsworthy about a company expanding into another country? You could say "Oh it's Siberia!", but Siberia is a place like any other.
I'm not sure about people who don't live in the US, but for Americans (strangley enough) the term "Siberia" holds a special place for us. As a kid who grew up during the Regan administration everyone would talk about how bad the Soviets were and that if you spoke out against the government you were sent to Siberia regardless and how much better we were for not doing that.
Eventually it got to be a cliche joke (which is why the "In Soviet Russia...") and Americans often joke among each other about being carted off to Siberia for minor offenses.
Now these days I'm sure if you asked the average Russian about what he thought of Siberia and he would most likley think of it as a place much like North Dakato in which it was boring and he wouldn't have any idea why anyone would live there, but if you asked an American, he'd conjure up images of Russian guards in great coats drunk on vodka forcing some poor Microsoft employee to work on the servers while a big picture of Stalin looked down on them in the camp.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I know you guys are hopeful but I really doubt Microsoft will open Windows.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's not exactly in the middle of nowhere, though. The city of Irkutsk has a population of approx. 600.000, and the Irkutsk oblast (region) is 2,5 million. So the population (and therefore available workforce) is most certainly there.
Besides, Microsoft already has departments in Russia, so the employees for this data center will probably come mainly from those. Also, comp.sci education in Russian universities has a fairly good reputation, so recruiting new people shouldn't be a problem.
A more obvious site would perhaps have been Novosibirsk (1,4 million), home to Novosibirsk State University -- the science captial of the Soviet Union.
However, I suspect Irkutsk was chosen partly because it is located (more or less) in the middle of Russia -- about halfway from St. Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the East -- and because labor is cheaper in Siberia than in Moscow or St.Petersburg.
Granted, the night life is far from what we've come to expect in most of Europe or the US, but there are bars, clubs and even a couple of decent restaurants. I had the best sushi of my life in Irkusk a couple of years ago.